Data Mining and its Role in Revealing Substance Use Disorder

Businesses rely on a large volume of information which may or may not be useful for users and the owners. It’s very important to keep a balanced margin between informative data and trivial data. To improve the processes of a business, data mining could be an ideal technique to implement. Outsourced solutions for business include data mining services, which are applied in businesses that aim to discover, monitor and improve factual processes. Data mining is the extraction of hidden predictive data from large databases. It utilizes data mining software, human creativity and sound methodology to determine relationships, dependencies, patterns and anomalies.

With strong consumer focus in retail, financial, communication, marketing organizations, E-commerce, healthcare, insurance, aviation and many more, extraction of data is the primary technique to determine pricing, customer preferences and satisfaction and corporate profits. With informative data, you can:

Boost customer loyalty

Release unseen profitability

Lessen customer attrition

According to an article in MIT Technology Review, data mining Facebook messages helped identify substance abusers. Substance Use Disorder (SUD) is a health condition in which regular use of substances such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco cause impairment in an individual’s life. This is a serious concern and to study this condition, a new technique has been developed by Bickel and co., which allows spotting the victims through his/her social media messages such as Facebook posts. It would be a useful initiative to identify those people who are already suffering from this condition or who are under the risk of surrendering to it because it costs more than $700 billion a year in lost productivity, crime and healthcare costs in the American economy as around one in 10 Americans suffer from this disorder. For this research,

Data collected from the year 2007 and 2012 was first collected and the users who signed up for the research project were offered various psychometric tests and given feedback on their scores.

Many of the participants allowed the data to be used for research purposes.

According to their level of substance abuse, the users were divided into groups according to their level of substance abuse.

The research team then gathered two other Facebook-related data sets that included status updates and “like” data.

They then set to find out how these data sets overlapped.

They found almost 1,000 users who were in all the data sets; just above 1,000 who were in the status update and substance abuse data sets, and 3,500 who were in the substance abuse and “likes” data sets.

Users with overlapping data sets provide rich pickings for data miners. The unique behavioural patterns of people with substance use disorders can be spotted in their status updates or in their patterns of “likes.”

The researchers say that their technique was very successful. They could accurately predict 86% tobacco use, 81% alcohol use, and 84% drug use. In addition this approach also helped identify a wide range of keywords that SUD patients are more likely to use in social media posts.

The team believes that social media is a promising platform for both examining SUD-related human behaviours as well as engaging the public for substance abuse hindrance and screening.

Market basket analysis: It helps the retailers to predict the customer’s previous purchase behaviour and help them to arrange the store accordingly.

Fraud detection: A model is built using the data and the algorithm and is made to identify whether the record is fraudulent or not.

Financial banking: To make a profitable customer stay on at the particular bank, their managers find data extraction to be very useful.

Data mining services play a vital role in the marketing department of a business organization. These services can take the company to the next level, because competition is severe in most business sectors and with an effective marketing strategy, the result will be profitable businesses.

Reliable outsourced solutions like data mining services are more in demand now. This is because organizations have to focus on their core business activities in today’s competitive world. Outsourcing secondary processes allows more time to concentrate on the major goals. A reliable document scanning company can provide effective data mining service that helps identify important business facts, and make sensible decisions. With competent outsourcing providers, your business has more chances of surviving and establishing its brand image in today’s competitive environment.

About Rajeev R

Manages the day-to-day operations of MOS from NY. With an interest in information technology, Rajeev has guided MOS to extensive use of digital technology and the internet that benefits MOS as well as MOS clients.
View all posts by Rajeev R →